


Like the Tide Pulls Me Under

by lady_ragnell



Series: Post-s3 Headcanon [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-04
Updated: 2012-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-28 22:53:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/313061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It doesn't feel like a choice, going to Lancelot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like the Tide Pulls Me Under

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://kinkme-merlin.livejournal.com/18397.html?thread=17118173#t17118173) at kinkme_merlin.
> 
> Title from Josh Groban's "Love Only Knows."
> 
> Gwen catches a lot of flak in this fandom, and this is my attempt to give a different perspective on things.

It doesn’t feel like a choice, going to Lancelot. She’s been picking up the pieces of her life as well as she can since Morgana (no, Morgause, she still can’t believe it of Morgana, not truly. There must be reason, there must be excuse, for this woman who used to be her best friend to betray them all so completely) was overthrown. Nobody knows quite what to do with her--knight’s sister, prince’s sweetheart, usurper’s maidservant--so she floats around Camelot, helping where she may. Elyan tries, but he (like Lancelot and Gwaine and Percival) is fighting for his place at the court, Leon their sole support while Arthur keeps Camelot from dissolving around them.

Gwen should, at the end of a long day of helping Gaius (because Merlin is always at Arthur’s heels now, or at least never far from them, look fragile like she’s seen him before but more determined than ever), naturally turn towards Arthur’s quarters. She’s done it before, in times of duress. It might even be easier now, with Uther weaker than he will ever admit and Arthur king in everything but name. But if she goes to Arthur now, it will be to steady him, to keep him from shaking apart as Merlin seems to be trying to do, to let him cling to her and to cling in return, and it isn’t what she wants.

So going to Lancelot is simple. Easy, even. She slips into his room seconds after he does one late afternoon, when he’s just left the courtyard with his mail scuffed and dust-stained from a long patrol. Not all of Morgause’s soldiers were immortal, so they lived--Morgana, once, would have thought that funny. Perhaps she does still. “Let me help you,” she offers, and he spins, hand on his sword like he expects an attack. “With your armor.”

“Lady Guinevere,” he says, and it sounds wrong just as it did the first time they met.

Still, she smiles. “None of that, Sir Lancelot. We’ve been through too much together for that, and I’m still not a lady.”

“You’re Arthur’s lady.” It’s almost unbearably gentle, so soft, the way Lancelot always is with her. He’s reminding her. Reminding them both, perhaps.

“Perhaps. But you still need help.” Gwen reaches for his buckles, and he lets her. She remembers teaching Merlin how to do this, years ago now. Now, though, she doesn’t allow herself to blush or linger, just lays the armor out to be cleaned, likely by Lancelot himself. No squires will serve the “common knights.” “Is it different, being back in Camelot?” she asks at last, stepping away and placing the last piece on his table.

“I hardly know. Since getting word from Merlin, everything has gone very quickly.”

“It always seems to, here.”

Lancelot shifts, as if not quite certain of what to do. “I wanted to ask how you are. I remember how fondly you spoke of the Lady Morgana …”

She blinks, caught off-guard, and then wonders why she’s caught off-guard. Nobody’s asked her this question, not since she caught Morgana working magic while Arthur was on his quest to the Perilous Lands. They all assume that all feelings of friendship disappear the moment a word of magic is spoken. Congratulate her for keeping Morgana ignorant of her true loyalties as long as she did. Merlin, she thinks, might understand better than others (she remembers Will; sometimes wonders how Arthur can’t see those memories written all over his friend’s face whenever he talks about the evils of magic), but she doesn’t dare ask. Things were strange between he and Morgana at the last. “I’ll be fine,” she whispers at last. It’s close enough to the truth.

Arthur would take it as truth, or pretend to. Merlin wouldn’t, and would worry and _not ask_ so loudly that she would have to avoid him. Morgana would tease the truth from her. Lancelot just nods, accepts the lie and doesn’t ask her to admit to it. “Did you want anything else?”

Gwen bites her lip before she can tell him the truth. “Just wanted to say hello. Have someone to talk to, and make sure you know that you can talk to me as well. Not that you couldn’t talk to someone else, with Merlin and Percival and the others here, but--”

Lancelot smiles, unbearably slow and gentle. “Thank you, Gwen. That means a great deal.”

She leaves, step a little lighter.  
*  
Once, Merlin had asked _If you could--Arthur or Lancelot?_ Gwen had blushed and said it didn’t matter, that neither of them would ever show an interest, but even then, with the recent memory of Merlin’s near-death and their kiss, she thinks she knows what her answer would have been if he’d pressed her. She doesn’t like herself for it.

Gwen loves Arthur. She knows it, and she feels it, but she is nearly certain they don’t feel it the same. She hadn’t lied, speaking to Merlin in those early days. _I like much more ordinary men._ Now, though, she means it differently. Servant and prince mean little to her. But Gwen is, at the end of the day, a practical woman, one who wants comfort and family and a warm hearth. If the hearth is in her father’s old home or in a royal bedchamber, it doesn’t matter. She wants love like she remembers her parents having when she was a child, silent and unflinching support, a warm hand in hers, a whisper to make her laugh when she’s upset. Gwen has small dreams.

Arthur gives her all of that. But Arthur doesn’t live, or feel, or love by halves. Everything he does, he does with not only destiny hanging over him, but with the force of everything he is and wants to be. He loves her fiercely, enough to defy his father, enough to think of giving up Camelot, enough to rescue her and protect her and want her by his side always (at least when it’s safe). When she’s with him, she’s swept up in it, in the fire of it, in the way he looks at her, in the ideals and the Camelot she can almost see when he talks about the day when he’ll be king.

(Arthur loves her too much. Arthur scares her, sometimes.)

It might be better, if she had reassurance that this is how it is for some, and that maybe Arthur won’t burn so bright always. But Morgana is like Arthur, full of that flame, and was even before she disappeared and came back to betray them. Even Merlin is, though he hid it well for a long time (she was glad for the chance for friendship with someone like her, someone who wants simple things, and she’d thought she found that until the days after Arthur almost died from the Questing Beast’s bite, when Merlin looked like his skin was too small to hold him; she still loves him just as much, but she also laughs at herself when she remembers calling him “ordinary”). She couldn’t tell him anyway--he’s been their greatest champion from the beginning.

Lancelot should be like them. Should be like Arthur. He’s the first common man to be made a knight of Uther’s court, and he’s worked for it his whole life. He’s a fighter as good at Arthur; better, in some ways. He goes on quests, he’s rescued her just as Arthur has. But.

But he smiled at her shyly when she measured him for his armor, once upon a time. And he always looks a bit bewildered at his good fortune when she sees him nowadays, with his fellow “common knights” or alone. He gives little girls flowers, laughs with Merlin as they walk through the courtyard, and retires early every night to polish his own mail.

Where Arthur is a bonfire, a pyre, someone who makes her lose herself just by stepping into a room that contains him, Lancelot is a hearth fire. He warms her, gentle and soothing and reeling her in to enjoy comfort and rest.

But Lancelot is loyal, and Gwen is in love.  
*  
Gwen keeps going to Lancelot’s rooms when he finishes patrols or drill. She tells herself it’s because he has no squire, and because he appreciates it more than Elyan would. Mostly, it’s that she still doesn’t know what to do with herself in this changed Camelot. When she sees Arthur, he tries his hardest to be just as he always was, but the shadows grow under his eyes as Uther pretends he’s healed and clings to the throne with everything he has. Merlin’s grow correspondingly, but neither of them will talk to her, however much she tries. So she goes to the other servants to rebuild Camelot physically, but too many of them see her as the future Queen, now, and won’t let her do the hard work she craves. She goes to the forge and finds Elyan there in his time off training, winning acceptance from the noble knights with his skill.

Every time she catches herself looking out a window and hoping that Morgana was simply mad and hadn’t changed so completely of her own choosing, every time the loneliness and inaction get to be too much, she goes to Lancelot. After a few weeks, he stops sending her away as soon as he feels is polite, and they talk about his adventures, alone and with Percival, and hers in Camelot. She comes to know Percival quite well, meeting him in the rooms, and Percival is good enough never to even look at her as if she is betraying Arthur.

“You and Arthur are promised,” Lancelot tells her.

Gwen has never agreed to marry Arthur; he has never asked her. He will someday, and she will say yes. “Yes,” she says. “But we can be friends.”

Lancelot scowls down at his sword as he polishes it, but he isn’t angry, just thinking. “This is dangerous.”

“Should I go?”

“No.” There’s a long, long silence. “Arthur loves you.”

Arthur treats her like glass, listens to her advice, sometimes can be just himself around her. She isn’t enough for him, could be overwhelmed by him if she let it happen. He won’t confide in her, wants to be strong around her like he is strong around everyone but Merlin. He will love her fiercely and beyond measure unless (until) she betrays him. “In his way.”

“I can’t betray him, Gwen. And you love him.”

“We won’t betray him. But please, I need you somehow. It will be lonely, otherwise.” Years stretching ahead of her of being a beloved queen. Maybe, sometimes, when Arthur remembers, a beloved wife.

“I wish …”

Gwen wishes too. She isn’t sure how she caught Arthur’s eye, how he caught hers. Perhaps because she was the only one but Merlin who stood up to him. Perhaps because the part of Arthur that always looks out for Camelot recognized her as kin. It doesn’t matter now, only that they’re caught and that she doesn’t know if she wants to break free, or if she could if she did. She wonders sometimes if he feels the same, if he wants someone who lives as he does. But Pendragons are nothing if they are not stubborn; Arthur will only change course when he has no other option. “If you don’t want this, tell me and I’ll leave.”

Lancelot doesn’t take the chance she’s giving both of them. “Stay.”

After Morgana’s betrayal, Gwen doesn’t have the strength to leave the warmth and comfort of Lancelot’s presence. She stays. When she leaves to make dinner for herself and Elyan at the forge, Lancelot stands and presses a helpless kiss to the corner of her mouth.

Gwen is not Queen yet. She can have this for now.


End file.
